Whistle down the wind

‘The Lady of the Nightingales’ Beatrice Harrison charmed King and country with her garden duets. One hundred years later, Julian Lloyd Webber examines whether her performances were fact or fiction

- Julian Lloyd Webber

ONE of the most extraordinary events in the history of broadcasting took place 100 years ago, in a Surrey garden near Limpsfield. Foyle Riding was home to the leading British cellist Beatrice Harrison, who, on May 19, 1924, became world famous overnight when the BBC—in one of its first live outside broadcasts—relayed her ‘duetting’ in her garden with a nightingale. The broadcast achieved a worldwide audience of millions and Harrison’s subsequent ‘cello and nightingale’ relays direct from her garden became regular, much-anticipated events for the next 12 years.

Harrison was a wonderful cellist. Born on December 9, 1892, in the foothills of the Himalayas, she was the second of a quartet of musical daughters. Her father belonged to a distinguished military family; her mother, Annie, was a striking, raven-haired Celt whose own singing ambitions had been thwarted. Both parents were determined to ensure that their talented children would have the best training possible and her father made the extraordinary decision—for those days—to abandon his own military life to concentrate entirely on his daughters’ musical upbringing.

Harrison made her Queen’s Hall debut in 1907, aged 14, under the baton of Henry Wood. Soon after, she left England to study in Germany, where she entered for the coveted Mendelssohn Prize in Berlin. Harrison won, becoming both the youngest competitor and the first cellist to win. On hearing the news, the German Kaiser sneered: ‘An English girl, never. For golf, perhaps, but music, NO!’